WHAT IS TO SHOW FOR THE EXTRA £43BILLION SPENT ON THE NHS

September 14, 2007

Five years on from his seminal report for the Treasury -- which paved the way for the 50 percent real increase in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) funding since 2002 -- Sir Derek Wanless published a review of how the extra £43 billion (about U.S. $86.5 billion) has been spent, says the Independent.

It would be difficult to plough an extra £43 billion into the NHS and not get something back for it, but there still remain several problems, says Wanless:

The NHS has gotten less efficient and is facing a bigger burden from the lifestyle problems of obesity, poor diet and lack of exercise.

Though the extra cash has bought extra services, there has not been a big enough bang for the buck.

Productivity is the big disappointment -- the NHS looks as if it is less efficient than it was.

Further, high pay rises for doctors and nurses have made matters worse, says Wanless:

Doctors in particular have had eye-watering rises of 25 percent for consultants and 23 per cent for general practitioners under their new contracts.

The scale of these increases and the bigger than expected growth in NHS staff has contributed to declining productivity.

To take one example, between 2000 and 2006, the number of patients admitted few per consultant fell by more than 20 percent and the number of emergency cases by 8 percent.

Tony Blair's mantra about the NHS was, "No extra cash without reform," says the Independent. Wanless's report shows that the cash has been provided -- sackloads of it -- but reform is still awaited. By throwing money at the problem, the government turned the NHS wheel faster -- but only produced more of the same.

Source: Jeremy Laurance, "The Big Question: What is to show for the extra £43bn spent on the NHS in the last five years?" The Independent, September 12, 2007.